


your demons all tamed, your flowers uncut

by miabicicletta



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: BAMF Molly Hooper, F/M, Offscreen Violence, Post-Case, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings, Shower sexiness, smut with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:04:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3864547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The detective’s face was soft, much gentler than Sally Donovan usually had reason to be. “He did a great thing tonight, finding you. But don’t think for a minute that he’s getting all the credit.” Sally raised her chin. “You’re the hero here, Hooper. <i>You</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	your demons all tamed, your flowers uncut

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of post-ordeal sexitimes. Unbetaed, so errors are all mine. Title is a line from the song [To The Ghosts Who Write History Books](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D0I-jadx5U) by The Low Anthem. Not a particularly emblematic song for this story, but I rather liked the line. Not my best work, but sometimes great is the enemy of good, and for me, at least, it's always the enemy of done. Hope you like it!

The camera flashed. Molly blinked, averting her face from the glare. 

“Sorry,” Sally said. She offered an apologetic smile, looking contrite. “Almost done. Can you–?” She gestured to turn. 

Molly turned. 

“Thanks. Lift your chin…” 

Molly lifted her chin. 

The camera flashed again. She closed her eyes. 

“Right,” Sally said, quickly. “Now, just the marks on your legs and you can get cleaned up.” 

Molly reached for the edge of her dress, glancing down at the visual evidence Sally was recording for the Met’s files, and posterity. Blood stained a sticky _V_ down the front of a pale blue tunic that came to her thighs. It was pretty. Feminine. Flattering. All reasons why she’d worn it special the night before. She traced the hem with her fingers, held it against her hips. Stained with petrol and water and dirt, the soft, flowy material had been caked in grime, tacky and damp. She wanted nothing more than to get it off. And then burn it. 

The shutter clicked. The camera flashed several times. She closed her eyes. 

“That’s it,” Sally announced. 

Molly spun the fingers of one hand around her wrist. “Is, um, is he still here?” 

Sally nodded. “Yeah, he’s waiting.” 

She swallowed. “Thanks.” 

“Molly?” 

Sally set the camera aside as she looked up. The detective’s face was soft, much gentler than Sally Donovan usually had reason to be. “He did a great thing tonight, finding you. But don’t think for a minute that he’s getting all the credit.” Sally raised her chin. “You’re the hero here, Hooper. _You_." 

“He did save me. And John’s little girl.” 

Sally’s brow furrowed in affront. “You saved _yourself_. He just made the dramatic entrance.” 

“No, he–I mean, yes, he does that,” Molly tried. Her throat felt thick. Words were only this hard when Sherlock Holmes was involved. 

Sally wasn’t convinced. “Yeah, yeah. I know. He did his thing: Found the impossible meaning in the impossible clues. Sure. Cause that’s what Sherlock Holmes does. But it was you who kept John and Mary's daughter alive. _You_ , Molly Hooper. You, who saved her life, and your own.”

Molly looked away, a painful lump in her throat at thought of her actions, the lengths she had gone to. She clenched her eyes shut, screwing her mouth up. 

Sally touched her arm. “I’m sorry. But I’m also damn proud of you. Think you can give my boys some defensive pointers like that?” 

Molly snorted. 

“I mean it. Proper improvisation, that was.” 

“Shut up, Sally,” she says. But she’s smiling, barely, in spite of herself. Just a tick of her mouth, just the curl of her lips. Just a little. 

Sally nodded to one of the doors. “Go on. The Watsons took Caroline home. She’s gonna be fine. Go find your boyfriend. Make him clean up and sleep. He’s been at it for days.” 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Molly said, hollow. 

Sally took her camera, said from the hallway door. “Nah. Probably not. Except he that is, has been, and always will be.” 

Molly took a shaky breath, steadied herself, uncertain. They hadn’t said anything yet. Not since earlier. She pushed open the door to the adjoining room. When last she'd been in here, it had been a break room, but was now...well, break room, deconstructed. A chair lay smashed in a corner. The shattered remains of several mugs were strewn along the floor against a wall. The table lay upended on its side, its contents strewn every which way. Sherlock sat against the wall in the corner, his hands on his knees. He looked up the instant she stepped in the room. 

She wanted to make a joke. _Scotland Yard didn’t have enough to do last night with a manhunt on, so you decided to make some more work for them, did you?_ Except she couldn’t. Her mouth wouldn’t work. She could barely stand to look at him. There was so much that she wanted to say, and she didn’t trust herself to keep it all from tumbling out. Apologies, explanations, _sentiments_...

Goosebumps pebbled her sticky skin. She held her tongue and moved quickly to the sink, feeling ill at how disgusting she was at the moment. She tried to scrub at the filth off her hands, but her fingers couldn’t hold the soap, could not manage the cloth... She gripped at both ineffectually, shaking. 

Arms around her, and the warm, solidness of him, _him_. The scent of tobacco and dust and sweat and _Sherlock_ filled the space. He took the cloth and soap from her shaking hands, ran the tap, placed them under the stream of water. The blood trickled away. She sucked in a painful breath as her hands came clean, and when he was finished, she turned off the water and turned in his arms, clinging to his shirt. Her hands scrabbled against the fabric. She felt him wrap his arms around her waist, around her shoulders, his fingers tangling in her hair. She squeezed her arms around his waist, holding on, or trying to. 

Sherlock pressed his head to hers, held her close. “Molly,” he said, and nothing more. 

She shook, weeping without sounds, her body quaking with silent emotional earthquakes that made her throat burn. 

After a minute, maybe two or three, she pulled back and spoke lowly against his shirt, “I need to go home.” 

“Your flat is still–”

She shook her head. “No, I know. I just– I need–” Molly clenched her teeth, failing. Did he get it? “ _Home_.” 

He seemed to understand. He wrapped his coat around her shoulders. “Home.” 

London blurred past. She stared out the window, unable to break the heavy silence that stretched between them. She sat away from the windows, head against the seat back, curled in his coat. He kept his hand on her wrist, taking her pulse, adding the data to some collection of metrics. Frequency of Molly Hooper’s arterial palpitation following trauma. 

He opened the door to his flat. She moved without thinking, without pause, dropping his coat unceremoniously upon John’s chair and avoiding his eyes. The linoleum was cold on her bare feet. She climbed in the bath and turned on the shower, clothes and all. He watched a moment before he climbed in beside her and pulled the curtain closed. She shook, shook, shook.

She pressed her back against the wall, leaning her head against the tile. She couldn’t tell where skin and tile began; she burned and she was freezing. The cool ceramic, a balm, the warm water, a thaw. The sound of water, the familiarity, the sense of _privacy_ after being examined and questioned and photographed for hours on end, broke the tension. The awful, awkward heaviness began to lift. 

“I got blood on your coat,” she said, apropos of nothing. 

“I don’t care,” Sherlock answered, staring. “I’m grateful it wasn’t yours.” 

The layers of dirt trickled down her arms and legs, eddying in pools between their bare feet. She stared at the expensive clothes Sherlock Holmes could so casual destroy. 

“Your clothes will be ruined,” she protested. 

“So what?"

She traced the curve of a button on his chest. The water sluiced over her fingers. "They're nice."

"They're just clothes, Molly. We’ll get new ones.” 

“Okay,” she said. She let her fingers fall away. She pressed the palms of her hands against the tile, her nails sliding against the wet surface. She tipped her head back, ready to face him. Prepared, maybe, to see. 

Sherlock stared down at her blood-soaked collar, watching the colors— _red brown black_ —shift, but linger. She imagined it sinking into her skin the same. She imagined it never washing out. 

“He told me,” Sherlock started, tentative. “He told me how he hurt you.” His fists clenched against his side. His shoulders sank. “He told me he tortured you. That he raped you.” He bit the words out like razors. “That he killed you. To _irritate_ me.” 

Her heart cracked at the extent of Sebastian Moran’s cruelty. “He was lying. He was taunting you,” she promised. 

“Irritate,’ Molly,” he said, incredulous. The water coursed down his face. His lips, his mouth, his cheeks, wet. “ _Irritate_.”

He reached out. His fingertips grazed the bruising along her collarbone. He touched her wet hair, brushing it from her face, past her temple. “It is important you know I feel no remorse over the fact that Moran is dead,” Sherlock Holmes said. “But I am sorry for everything you went through, and I am so sorry you were the one to kill him, Molly Hooper.” 

She touched his wrist, feeling suddenly brave, the way she had needed to be that night, for Caroline, for her friends who feared for their child, for Sherlock. And for herself, most of all. 

She met his eyes, held them, fierce. “Don’t be,” she said. 

He leaned in, kissing her cheek. His lips hovered above her wet skin. Beads of water carried from his lips to hers. She tilted her head up. His nose grazed hers. Hands on her hips, he kissed her mouth. Soft, slow, decisive. 

She unbuttoned her pretty new dress, destroyed beyond all use. It fell to the tile in a wet heap. His shirt, trousers, everything, joined hers. She breathed the clean, humid air between them. He leaned his forehead against hers. The water rinsed away blood and dirt and petrol as they stood under the spray, unmoving, until the water ran cold. 

In his bedroom, Molly dried her skin and pulled a t-shirt over her head. She combed her hair out, and robotically knit it into a braid. He kneeled beside her in blue pyjama bottoms, presenting her with tea she did not ask for and looking at a loss. He was trying to help, she realized, but had no idea what she might need. 

She kissed him, this time. “Stay,” she said. “Please.” 

“I,” he hesitated, blinking, “don’t want to hurt you.” 

“Then take me to bed, Sherlock,” she said against his mouth. “Cuts and bruises heal. And I am very strong.” 

“Strong,” he repeated, taking her head in his hands. “No. You are ferocious. And utterly beautiful to me.” 

She climbed into his lap. He ran his hands up her sides, under her shirt, cupping her breasts in his large hands, leaning into her. She sighed as he molded them in his palm, his tongue sliding along her neck. 

He flipped her over….and recoiled. 

Sherlock fell back, landing on the floor with frantic, catlike grace. Molly cried out, fearing he’d hurt himself. He flung himself to his feet, eyes wide, pacing horribly as he stared at the purpling-red bruises on her skin. 

“What–?”

He smashed his closed fists on the door of his wardrobe. The wood splintered. He ripped the door from it’s hinge in one awful, ludicrous motion. 

“Stop it,” she hissed. “Sherlock!” 

He threw the broken door to the wall. A frame toppled off the wall and went clattering to the floor beside it. “I can’t– _Molly!_ ” Sherlock blazed.

“They’re just bruises."

“How are you so forgiving,” he seethed, eyes wild. “When I want to kill him again for _breathing your air_?” 

“Forgiving?” She reached for his wrist. “You think I am forgiving?”

Molly gazed up at him. Her jaw was tight. Her skin crawled even as she felt her heartbeat quicken with rage. She spoke slowly, baring her teeth in anger “He told me he was going to leave my eyes for you and your brother to find. ‘ _One for each_ ,’ he said. ‘ _Right in their teacups, with a spoonful of sugar for sweet Molly Hooper_ ,” she said in Moran's psychotic sing-song. “He wanted to murder your goddaughter. Murder me. Do all those horrible things he told you he already had, and then cut me into pieces. All to make you suffer.” 

Her fingers tightened on his wrist. “You think I am forgiving? Sherlock: I _opened his throat_ with a nail to keep him from hurting the people I love. No one more than you.” 

His clenched jaw cut a hard line of pale skin and dark shadow. He dropped to his knees before her, his head falling into her lap at the edge of the bed. She touched his face, surprised to find it wet. “I would be terrified out of my mind if he was still loose,” she said into his hair. “Plotting some horrible new nightmare, planning to hurt someone else...But Sherlock, he’s dead. _He is gone_.” She cupped his face and curled her fingers in his hair. “We’re all okay.” 

"Molly,” he said, looking up. “You are so far from okay.” 

She shrugged, a smiling tugging at her lips. “I dunno. I’m in the bedroom of Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective and fake sociopath. Sounds pretty okay to me,” she offered. 

A beat.

“Don’t make jokes, Molly,” they said together. He breathed deeply, looking away, blinking rapidly. When he returned the full force of his gaze, there was softness in his eyes, and degree of relief in his expression. She pulled him up to the bed. Sherlock spread his entire body against hers. They laid hip to hip, chest to chest, his mouth on her pulse point, feeling the rhythmic beat of blood in her veins. Proof of life, Molly thought, and slid her fingers through his hair. 

“Thank you,” she said. “For finding us.”

"Molly." His voice was rough. He spoke her name in an odd way. The syllables were the same but he said it as though he meant something different than before, and when he splayed his hands across her skin, she felt she had been changed too. 

She peeled away the t-shirt he’d given her. He kissed the bruises across her body. The long, angry scrapes against her abdomen and rib cage. The zip tie marks on her wrists.

“You, Molly Hooper, are remarkable,” he said. 

He entered her slowly: steady but insistent movements that pulled a sigh from her throat and sent her reeling. She hugged her legs against his hips, his waist. He pushed against her, making breathy, undone sounds. She let out a high, gasping sigh, coiling around him, one hand in his hair, gripping his mouth to her neck, holding the broad round of his shoulder. 

“Sherlo–” she gasped, unable to finish for the feel of him moving inside her. Chills ran up her spine, pebbling her skin and breasts. It was sore and tender and _desperate_. Later, she promised herself, she wanted to fuck the fear of this out of him, kiss away the guilt and anger and pain, if she could. If he'd let her. She wanted him to understand all the things this kind of intimacy could be—a conversation, a game, an experiment. She wanted to take him fast and wild, and have slow, exploring, lazy Sunday kind of sex just for the pleasure of it. She wanted him to know how much she loved him, and that it meant in all ways, under all circumstances. That no terms and conditions applied. 

They were both too exhausted, too pent up and on edge to last long. She couldn't come; it hardly mattered. It was never going to be brimming hearts and stars in her eyes. It was only the trueness, the realness of it, that meant anything. The vulnerability he had chosen to show her. 

“Come in me,” she panted into his mouth. His breathing was ragged. His forehead against her collarbone, she scratched her fingertips along his back, and he moaned a sigh of release. 

After, he curled around her like a dragon protecting his treasure. He drew circles on the skin of her belly, he brushed back the line of hair at her neck, dipping his mouth down against the blemishes. He was gentle, childlike, even. How much he was. 

“I’m not a fake sociopath.” 

“You are.” 

“No, I’m _not_. I’m an extremely high-functioning–” 

“No.” 

“No?” 

“You’re not. That’s your excuse. You’re not a sociopath.” 

“Molly, I have spent years of my life analyzing the–" 

“I know what you are, Sherlock. Better than you, I think." 

“Psychology really isn’t your area,” he scoffed. 

“Oh? Because a man left bruises on my thighs and you smashed your wardrobe into pieces.” 

He hummed a noncommittal sound. He traced words and shapes into her skin. She wondered what they meant. “It would be good if you stayed here,” he said after a time. 

“Good?” she repeated. 

“Good.” 

Molly considered the steadiness of his gaze, the shape of his mouth, the beat of his heart. No rapid-fire calculation here. No double-time brainwork necessary. “Maybe,” she answered. “How long would you like me to stay, Sherlock?” She curled a lock of his hair around her fingers. 

He ran his hand down the line of her left arm, from shoulder to wrist to fourth proximal digit. The slide of his fingertip along the skin between the first and second interphalangeal joints set the downy hairs of her arm on end. She looked up at him in surprise. 

“However long you can stand my company, Molly Hooper.” 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments are much appreciated!


End file.
